New technology for river restoration

The UK Environment Agency is looking to improve the flow of information about European river-restoration projects by implementing a new knowledge management (KM) system.

The new system has been developed with the help of water managers, engineers and ecologists, and will be named 'restore'. It is the cumulative effort of six fluvial organisations, including River Restoration and the Environmental agency in the UK, Wetlands International and Dienst Landelijk Gebied in the Netherlands, Finnish SYKE and Italian CIRF.

Around 500 restoration projects from around Europe will be compiled on the semantic-wiki-based KM system, which will assist future projects in the continent.

Restore project manager at the Environment Agency, Antonia Scarr, said that the improved searchability will assist in managing rivers to better cope with climate change. She said: “Rivers have been declining, getting worse, and people don’t realise that."

River restoration has historically used a lot of concrete, which has often made the problem much worse. Environmental agencies now increasingly look to work more with nature, and a better understanding of past projects will significantly enable the ability to do this.

Posted by Joseph Hutton